Grassroots organisations act in their own names and are accompanied in their own advocacy and development.

The work of livelihoods groups has improved food security as a result of their food production and micro enterprises.

Our work and our practice seek to enhance human dignity.

The Nutrition deficit on the plates of South Africans is the consequence of economic and political choices

On the 1st of February PACSA’s Research and Advocacy Coordinator, Julie Smith, made a presentation at a learning space for dieticians and nutritionists working in the public health care sector and in private practice in the Western Cape. PACSA was invited to talk through its Food Price Barometer work.

We shared an affordability framework which we have found useful to better understand and contextualise the reality faced by millions of South African families and the struggles to put good quality nutritious food on the table. The framework positions the problems on our plates as originating in the economy. These problems are caused by the types of political choices being made by the state and how our economy is structured and performing.

The presentation took the health care workers through a series of statistical slides which showed how the racial structure of our labour market and economy means that South Africa’s low and racialized baseline wage regime has not been transformed whilst unemployment levels for Black South Africans has stagnated at extremely high levels. South Africa is not creating jobs and the jobs that we do have pay workers poverty wages. This context means that Black South African households have been under severe financial pressure for a prolonged period of time and that the financial buffers to absorb shocks have either already been eroded or are close to being eroded. This affordability crisis has crashed onto the family plate. Women are forced to prioritise their expenditures, including food purchases. Women prioritise foods that fill bellies, allow meals to be cooked and for palatability. It means that diets are extremely deficient in dietary diversity – being very low in protein, vegetables, calcium, fibre, minerals and vitamins. Women don’t choose this for their families; most women have a very good basic understanding of nutrition – they are forced to eat like this given affordability constraints. The affordability crisis has massive implications for health: women are bearing the brunt of the crisis and are getting very sick. Children are presenting with more severe and prolonged common childhood illnesses which should be resisted through a proper plate of food. The framework identified that all of problems of the economy invariably end up in the public health care sector.

For PACSA the economy is at the heart of the issue. There appear to be no current useful ideas about dealing with the massive unemployment crisis at the level of the state. The two major instruments which could assist to buffer the storm in the short-term are the wage and the social grant. Neither of these two instruments is being used. PACSA’s focus is on shifting the low-baseline wage to the level of a living wage and increasing the Child Support Grant to a level where mothers can feed their children properly – there can be no future with poverty level wages and grants set below the food poverty line. Longer term we would need to reimagine and restructure the economy.

We encouraged dieticians and nutritionists to raise the alarm about what they are seeing in the public clinics and hospitals; to support campaigns to increase the Child Support Grant; and if nothing else – to listen to women. Women are carrying the crisis of the economy with virtually no support and even less understanding. Women are trying. If we can just listen and try and understand the context in which women are struggling.

About PACSA

PACSA is an independent, faith-based, non-governmental organisation that has worked to achieve social and economic justice for over 30 years. PACSA works for improved social cohesion as inequality and poverty is reduced in communities in the uMgungundlovu District in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

PACSA submission on the proposed National Minimum Wage

We call on the Portfolio Committee on Labour to consider the political consequences of passing a poverty-level National Minimum Wage which with the possible amendments to the Labour Relations Act and Basic Conditions of Employment Act will be felt for generations. These will lock Black South African workers and their families into deeper poverty and reproduce the low growth, low wage and low jobs trajectory. Read the full submission

Resource paper on the proposed VAT and fuel levy hike and its impact for the foods on our plates.

Budget 2018 proposed hiking the VAT rate to 15% and levying a 52 cents hike on the fuel levy. Using food as an entry point and drawing on PACSA’s food price barometer research, the following short paper is intended as a resource to better understand and conceptualise the impact of these proposals for working class households. Read full paper

PACSA letter to the Standing Committee on Finance on expanding the zero-rated basket to mitigate the effect of VAT

Expanding the basket of zero-rated foods has been contested on the basis of the following arguments:

Expanding the basket may disproportionately benefit the rich (because rich or poor we share quite a few common foods).

Selecting the new foods to be included in the zero-rated basket is incredibly complex as what foods are eaten, how foods are prepared and changing households purchasing patterns are all influenced by household specific and other complicated external variables. Even with the experience PACSA has around tracking food patterns and prices, there are just far too many variables in creating an expanded zero-rated basket that responds to the requirements of the working class and the impact on the larger economy. At best, we would be able to make an educated guess – but this hardly seems a sufficient response to the crisis we are in. Read full statement